If we could label September, it wouldn’t be wrong to call it “the month of proclamations”.
A bit like New Year’s Eve, the milestone between summer and fall, this period of transition comes along the resumption of activities and stimulates reflections, facilitates balances, triggers planning, looking for enthusiasm as a remedy what went lost: summer over, a year of work with ups and downs, successes and failures.
If a”proclamation month” worked; if what we claim were to be realized, we would probably live “in the best of all possible worlds”. Meetings that start and end on time, customers who pay, deliveries met, jobs that make people happy. On the relational level: zero misunderstandings, serenity, respect for everyone and from everyone. On a personal level: a coherent management of time, tangible improvements, a satisfactory evolution of our self.
Faced with the multiplicity of legitimate expectations and desires that human beings place in the resumption of their activities, nature, as often happens, responds to the contrary.
The trees are stripped, the colors fade, the heat slowly decreases, sounds get quiet and everything that was flourishing summer reality slips into a still life.
Nature prepares the spring and summer that will be through the “path of less”. If plants pumped their lymph during the winter, they would die or get exhausted in the warm season, failing the very purpose for which they exist.
Our practice, the practice of the upcoming year, if it is to be fruitful, must accept this law of nature.
Some travel companions are gone. But others will come.
Strength and vigor change year after year. But you can work to feel the energy more finely.
The technical and physical limits will not disappear, on the contrary, they will become a fractal with no possibility of solution. We will learn the beauty of always having different margins for improvement.
So, if you need to make a proclamation in September, let it claim a year of “natural” life (and practice). Without the need to hide or take refuge in artifacts, without the need to create virtual worlds in which we push ourselves back to build our own identity questioned by a liquid world, frenetic and sometimes greater than our ability to understand.
After all, a humble and confident practice of a discipline is based on respecting schedules – and therefore it is possible, at least in some parts of the week, to live in a world where schedules are respected.
After all, a practice of a discipline carried out in an open and available way towards one’s mates, is based on the “suspension of judgment” – and therefore it is possible, not without a healthy effort, to create relationships based on respect and serenity.
After all, a sincere practice of a discipline and aimed at one’s own good, can only grow, in the silence of waiting, seeds of change and personal renewal. Nature asks only for patience and trust and a pinch of laborious collaboration.
Happy resumption everyone!
Disclaimer: Photo by Katie Moum on Unsplash